Review: Sermon on the Mount

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "Sermon on the Mount" by Clarence Jordan

Sermon on the Mount

Sermon on the Mount, Clarence Jordan. Wipf & Stock (ISBN: 9798385269792) 2026, first published 1970.

Summary: A Bible commentary combining textual exposition, Southern storytelling, and challenging application.

“They were young, and life pressed in on their hearts like steam in an unpopped kernal of popcorn just before it explodes. They wanted action, adventure, achievement, happiness. To be sure, they lived nearly two thousand years ago, but that does not alter the fact that they desired to make their lives count significantly.”

So opens Clarence Jordan’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. We recognize at once the Southern storyteller of The Cotton Patch Gospel. At the same time, we find careful study of the biblical text, and the trenchant insights and applicatory challenges people encountered when they listened to Jordan. At the outset, Jordan makes clear we cannot have Jesus without the sermon, nor the sermon without Jesus.

He begins with two chapters on the Beatitudes, which he describes as a “Stairway to Spiritual Life.” Through all, the kingdom is the blessing, and each beatitude another step. We begin with being deeply concerned with our spiritual poverty, a concern that gives way to mourning. Then we meekly surrender to God’s will. We then hunger for a righteousness that is more than the praise of people. Nourished by God, we show mercy by sharing what we have with others. The truly righteous and merciful recognize that there is no room for insincerity in our hearts as people longing to see God. Finally, the blessed share in God’s purpose of making peace in the world.

Jordan then turns to “The Effect of the Christian Community on the World” (Matthew 5: 10-16). Basically, he contends that if Jesus has set us alight, has made us salty, we can’t hide it. We are witnesses, together comprising a holy city on a hill.

The next three chapters cover Matthew 5:17-48 under the theme “Things Old and New.” Jordan observes God’s intent that we love him whole heartedly, how the teachers had turned the law into cold formalism, and how Jesus calls out whole hearted love. He does so in his demanding challenge to sexual purity, his uncompromising stance on divorce, and the simplicity of saying ‘yes” or “no.” He observes the murderous character of anger. Rather than agreeing with adversaries, Jordan translates the verse as “be agreeable.” He tells a fascination story of invaders taking a town, only to find no one is resisting them. Finally, instead of retaliation, we let ourselves be imposed upon and we love enemies as well as friends. And so is love perfected in the disciple.

The following two chapters on fasting, alms, and prayers in Matthew 6:1-18 concern “Testing Our Motives.” Again, the motives are absolute loyalty and sincerity toward God. The teaching on prayer makes this clear both in how we pray and what we pray.

The rest of the sermon is covered in four chapters. “The Measure of a Treasure” addresses what we count as treasure. Here, Jordan also speaks about how God’s provision is enough that through our generosity, there need be none who are needy. “The Danger of Self-Righteous Judging” (Matthew 7:1-6,15) distinguishes between truth-telling and censorious judgments, which he portrays humorously as “old Plank-Eye himself.” Jordan portrays the dynamic of “Power Through Faith and Discipline” in Matthew 7:7-14 as the disciple who keeps asking, seeking, knocking, and who persists in the narrow way. Finally, “Clear Call to Christian Action” (Matthew 7:24-27) warns of how we set up substitute kingdoms that sidestep hearing and doing what Jesus says.

Jordan is both plain-spoken and concise in his study. While many have written much longer books (this comes in at 95 pages), I don’t think any have written with either greater clarity about the meaning of the sermon. Nor have any written with any more pointed challenges. Yet all this comes across as almost conversational. But for all that, Jordan makes it clear this is a sermon for disciples of Jesus to live.

_____________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Love Your Neighbor

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
Cover image of "Love Your Neighbor" by Katherine M. Douglass and Brittany M. Tausen

Love Your Neighbor

Love Your Neighbor, Katherine M. Douglass and Brittany M. Tausen, foreword by Dominique DuBois Gilliard. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802885234) 2026.

Summary: The psychological pathways and spiritual practices informed by scripture that activate neighbor love.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31, NIV)

Two simple commands that sum up the life of a Christian disciple. Clear. But challenging enough to engage us for a lifetime in keeping them. This book focuses on the second of these, how we love the real neighbors in our lives. It addresses the gap between our aspirations and the reality of our practice. Written by a social psychologist and a practical theologian, it brings together both psychological and biblical insights that help us turn aspirations into action, potential into practice.

The book is broken into three parts. The first explores the circumstances that get in the way of loving neighbors. Some of this is knowing who our neighbors are, which I appreciated. I recently realized I don’t even know the names of many of our nearby neighbors. Then we are often in too much of a hurry, not unlike the two religious leaders with the man by the side of the road. Likewise, we may be on overload from both physical activity and mental distractions like our devices. So, we may need some silence and stillness in our lives. Finally, when there are many others who could love, we fall prey to “the bystander effect” instead of taking personal responsibility when we see a need.

But sometimes what we think and feel about our neighbors gets in the way of loving them. The second part addresses this challenge. Firstly, practicing giving the benefit of the doubt helps us deal with negative first impressions. Often, we pigeonhole and dehumanize people. So, personal encounters help us discover the full humanity of others. But sometimes our dehumanizing leads to contempt. This chapter reminded me of the young man in our neighborhood whose loud exhaust and fast driving disturbs me day and night. At the authors’ suggestion, I’ve begun praying for him each time I hear his car. It helps!

Then sometimes our sense of scarcity keeps us from loving. We start seeing life as a zero sum game, where whatever I give is loss for me and gain for another. Instead, we are invited to learn to trust God’s care for us and that there will be enough to go around. Finally, our unquestioned beliefs may get in the ways of helping others in the form of confirmation bias. The authors challenge us to question and explore and think about our unquestioned beliefs about others.

The third section gets into ways we may choose to love better. In a mobile society, they encourage us to treat every place we live as home, a place where we invest. They invite us to grow in listening with empathy, as well as talking less in order to listen. Then, there are many times where simply being present, especially to someone in pain is the most loving thing we can do. Finally, despite our efforts, people may still treat us poorly. Rather than retaliate, the authors explore how we might keep showing up, sustained by prayer and affirmations of our worth.

Each chapter consists of three parts including insights from psychology, theological insights that parallel these, and very practical strategies for living these out faithfully. What I appreciated is that the parallel insights do not seem forced, as has been the case at times when writers try combine psychology and scripture. And they offer very practical strategies.

Our church, a neighborhood church, has been learning to know and love our neighbors, beginning with knowing them by name. I’m going to suggest that our governance team get the book and read it to think about going deeper into neighbor love. I’d recommend it for other leaders groups as well. And any individual or group may profit from reading and practicing what’s here. After all, it just takes us into deeper obedience to the command of Jesus to love our neighbors.

_____________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

The Weekly Wrap: August 30-September 5

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment

The Weekly Wrap: August 30-September 5

Remembering Wendell Berry

I wanted him to live forever. But Marce Catlett, published a year ago reminded me that Wendell Berry was a mortal, like us all. I loved all of his writing, his fiction, essays, and poetry. On Tuesday, he crossed over Jordan.

Hannah Coulter was my favorite novel. It’s the story of a woman whose husband didn’t return from war, her decision to remain on her land in Port William, and share life with a second husband. Like everything Berry wrote, it is filled with communion both with the land and one’s people.

Land and people. Wendell taught me that love and careful attention to both are central to the calling of us all. We cannot care for the world if we do not love our people and our place.

He warned us to be slow to adopt the new and only do so if it was truly better, simpler, more energy efficient, and easily repaired locally. I don’t know if he wrote about data centers but I suspect he would shake his head at the folly of sacrificing arable land at the cost of huge expenditures of energy and water to impose AI on our population while we increasingly import our food from other countries, often with questionable food safety practices.

Yet amid the folly, he took joy in the bubbling stream, the changing seasons, and conversations with other men while harvesting. Few things were so beautiful as well as useful as a good team of horses. And few things so sustaining as a midday farm meal, with family and workers gathered round.

Thankfully, he left us so much of his wisdom in his books. Meanwhile, Wendell Berry is living his final Sabbath poem.

Five Articles Worth Reading

My first article is really three of the many tributes to Wendell Berry. First, verse from Gracey Olmstead, “In Memory: Wendell Berry.” Secondly, Norman Wirzba combines personal memories of meeting Wendell Berry with reflections on Berry’ sense of people and the land in “Wendell Berry’s vision of a sacred world.” Finally, Barbara Kingsolver, whose father (also a Wendell) worked with Berry to preserve threatened Kentucky lands, summarizes Berry in “Wendell Berry’s Message to Readers: All We Need Is Here.”

Perhaps it is fitting we remember Berry on Labor Day Weekend. One way to do so is to take a deep dive into JSTOR’s archive of articles on labor in “Labor Day: A Celebration of Working in America.”

However, contrary to Berry’s vision, our modern day “tech bros” have pursued a very different vision. In a review of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore, Gal Beckerman fantasizes about taking a time machine to confiscate the science fiction these men read (or misread), that inspired their vision of the world. The review is suggestively titled “We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys.”

She’s an Oxford John Donne scholar and the writer of the middle grade Impossible Creatures fantasy trilogy. Now, Katherine Rundell has published a book for adults: Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. Amanda Ramirez interviews the author in “Voracious Appetites: PW Talks with Katherine Rundell.”

Finally, Mark Bauerlein writes in “Saved by the Norton” how the two-volume Norton anthology transformed him. It gave a structure and coherence to his studies and view of the world. He thinks these things are lacking in contemporary literary studies.

Quote of the Week

Mary Renault, who wrote historical fiction, was born on September 4, 1905. She offered this watchword for how we ought live:

“One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Last week, Dolly Parton. This week, Wendell Berry. I’ve remarked that it seems that I go to more funerals than weddings these days. And it seems this is the season of the passing of many heroes. Perhaps this makes one long all the more for the great reunion!

Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head is deliberately titled. He contends our modern world has each of us living in our own autonomous mental worlds. He argues real knowing involves getting out of our heads and into the world of things and flesh and blood people. Crawford talks, as do Michael Polanyi and Esther Lightcap Meek about knowing as personal. I think this is an important message as we are tempted to immerse ourselves ever more in digital worlds.

Recently, I reviewed T.A. Gibson’s A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Invitation. As I was working on the review, I realized he authored an earlier collection, A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Mirror and made a note to get a copy, having liked its sequel so much. Yesterday, I learned the author graciously gifted me with one and gave me permission to use poems in my weekly Bob on Poetry readings. I don’t get paid for any of this, but things like this make it worth it!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Katherine M. Douglass and Brittany M. Tausen, Love Your Neighbor

Tuesday: Clarence Jordan, Sermon on the Mount

Wednesday: Gerhard Lohfink, The Light of Faith and Reason

Thursday: Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

Friday: Tim Brown, Nolan

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 30-September 5.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Review: Tell Me Everything

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "Tell Me Everything" by Elizabeth Strout

Tell Me Everything

Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout. Random House (ISBN: 9780593446119) 2025.

Summary: While Bob Burgess represents a murder suspect, he and those around him tell stories of their and other lives.

I understand that the working title of this work was The Book of Bob. Strout opens the book describing him, a description we see bearing out in this book:

“This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time we are speaking of him. Bob has a big heart, but he does not know that about himself; like many of us, he does not know himself as well as he assumes to, and he would never believe he had anything worthy in his life to document. But he does; we all do.”

One of the main threads of the story is the relationship Bob, a semi-retired criminal defense lawyer develops with Matt Beach. Matt was a reclusive artist who cared for his mother Gloria Beach. He came home to find her missing and called the police. But she wasn’t found until the following March in a quarry pool near a missing rental vehicle. Gloria Beach was a miserable person for most people to be around, nicknamed “Bitch Ball” when she’d work in the school cafeteria. Suspicions focused on Matt though there was no hard evidence tying him to her murder. Matt’s sister, Diana, a successful school counselor asks Bob to become his lawyer. He is perhaps the first to listen to Matt and becomes his friend, even staying with him for several nights when he is particularly troubled. He discovers Matt’s artistic gifts. That’s the murder mystery part of this novel.

The novel revolves around the telling and unfolding of life stories. The other thread running through the novel are the walks Bob and author Lucy Barton take together. “Tell me everything” is the refrain describing their conversations. Bob talks about his brother Jim and his own troubled past, having accidentally killed his father as a child playing in the family call, accidentally putting it in gear, rolling over his father. Lucy discusses her troubled relationship with her daughters. She also recounts her conversations with Olive Kitteridge. Although ninety-one, Olive’s memory is sharp, and she shares with Lucy stories of “unrecorded lives.” Soon, Lucy reciprocates, although Olive doesn’t always appreciate the stories.

Lucy is back together with her ex, William. Bob is husband to the Unitarian minister, Margaret Estaver. There are no conflicts between them but in some ways Bob and Margaret have grown apart. People, even William and Margaret, see Bob and Lucy as “just friends” but we sense the emotional intimacy grow between them through the book, a crisis Bob confesses to his brother Jim.

Bob and Jim grow closer in the book when Jim’s wife Helen dies. Jim comes to terms with what a poor husband, father, and brother had been. He claims he was the one who put the car in gear that day. Bob and his sister remember things differently. In the end, it is uncertain, but Bob bears the marks of this on his life. Lucy describes him as a “sin eater,” one who absorbs the hard stories of others while caring for them.

And the point of all the telling of stories? Lucy expresses it to Olive this way, “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.” But we also see in the telling of stories characters growing in self-awareness and depth–Matt Beach, Margaret, Jim, and indeed, Bob and Lucy become more fully themselves. Indeed, one of the things Bob experiences is the discovery through the words of others the “worthiness” of his life.

One comes away from this Elizabeth Strout novel with the sense that there is no such thing as an insignificant life. Even Gloria Beach had lovingly cared for Matt as a child when his life was in danger. And not unlike my reaction to Theo of Golden, I found myself wanting to be more like this Bob. Both men affirmed the worth of others simply by noticing and naming that worthiness. This is not a small thing, it seems.

Review: Murder on the Yellow Brick Road

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "Murder on the Yellow Brick Road" by Stuart Kaminski

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (Toby Peters, 2) Stuart Kaminski. Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781453238271), 2011 (first published in 1977).

Summary: When a Munchkin is murdered on the “Wizard” set, Peters is hired to find the killer and protect Judy Garland.

I never particularly liked the Munchkins in Wizard of Oz. and this story did nothing to endear them to me. Toby Peters, known for his discretion on a previous case involving Errol Flynn, gets the call to come to The Wizard of Oz set at MGM. Lying on the Yellow Brick Road is one very dead Munchkin, found by Judy Garland, working on another film. Shortly before being found, someone overheard him in a heated argument with another Munchkin. So Toby’s police detective brother arrests him. But when Toby interviews him, he decides they arrested the wrong man

That becomes clearer when someone shoots at him. And because Garland is at risk, the studio adds protecting her to his assignment. Good thing, too. He discovers someone had tried to poison her. As he investigates, suspects keep dying. And there are more attempts on his life, his old Buick taking the brunt of it. His brother suspects him of at least one of the murders. But then, Toby and Phil have always been at odds.

But there are compensations. He gets to visit the Hearst estate to interview Clark Gable, who had information relevant to the case. He even runs into Raymond Chandler, hanging out in a hotel lobby “picking up characters and dialogue.” Chandler offers to tag along to see a real private detective in action. And Toby falls in love with Garland’s assistant, a dark-haired beauty.

This was my first Toby Peters book. Compared to Kaminsky’s Porfiry Rostnikov and Abe Lieberman, Peters seems more of the caricature of a private investigator, a bit unsavory and hard-bitten, trying to survive. I may try a few more to see if he develops as a character. The celebrity tie-ins, a feature of this series, I gather, add an element of fun. However, the meeting with Chandler felt forced to me. But Kaminsky offers enough plot twists as well as (to me) a surprise at the end.

Review: Night of the Fireflies

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "The Night of the Fireflies" by Muriel Elmer.

Night of the Fireflies

Night of the Fireflies, Muriel Elmer. Independently published (ISBN: 9798196399244) 2026.

Summary: A memoir of growing up as a Missionary Kid with her widowed mother in Zimbabwe, both painful and formative.

I grew up hearing stories like these from missionaries who visited our church. And there was a period of time during and after college when I read a number of missionary biographies. But I never read an account of a “missionary kid.” From the few MKs I met, their story was usually less glorious than the ones I read. And it has been too long since I’ve read any such accounts. That is, until Muriel Elmer’s memoir of growing up as a child of missionaries in Africa came along.

Trained in nursing, she has directed relief efforts for children, taught nursing, and educational studies. I interviewed her several years on a book she co-authored, titled The Learning Cycle. So it was a pleasure to hear from her again, and even more to read this account of her early life. She recounts her childhood at a mission station in Msengedzi in the Zambezi Valley of present-day Zimbabwe up through when she enrolled in nursing studies at Wheaton College, spanning a period from 1942 to 1958.

Rudy and Mary Danielson heard a call from God to go to Africa and departed for there in 1942, along with their toddler, Muriel. Working with another couple, Orv and Helen Dunkeld, who would play an important role in Muriel’s life, they established the mission station. But Rudy died just a year later, in November of 1943. Muriel recounts their trip back to the States in 1944, on a blacked out ship during the war, evading enemy submarines. When the war ended, Mary and Muriel returned.

The years after their return were magical, though challenging. The Dunkeld’s boys were co-adventurers with her. She describes encounters with baboons, the rains, and a unique experience one night of fireflies invading their hut. But the magic years did not last as her mother made the decision to send her to boarding school. In addition to a cruel housemother came the cost of fitting in, the beginnings of struggles with self-doubt and shame her mother never quite grasped.

Eventually, she moved to another school and stayed in a home with the Dunkeld family and several others. This was a healing contrast to her earlier boarding school experiences. But her experiences and that of living in three different cultures left her wondering who she was. The latter part of the memoir traces her growing understanding of God’s working in her life amid a troubled childhood. She writes:

“And so, as I think about the circle of my life, it is like a set of pearls on a string. Each pearl represents yet another strange place where a gracious God has designed new experiences, each adding to my perspective and my character in the service of others. Those cross-cultural relational skills so unconsciously bred into me as a child became my gifts to build his Kingdom.”

She describes her mother’s work of teaching and sometimes basic medical care as well as the mission community of which they were a part–both the precious friendships and the losses. During her teen years, she grew deeper in her faith, especially under the influence of the Dunkelds. She also had a growing sense that she needed to pursue nursing training. This resulted in the decision to finish her high school training at Wheaton Academy before going on to nursing training.

The narrative describes mission work embedded among people, learning from them and serving them and gaining their trust. It contrasts with accounts of Western missions as imperialist and colonial efforts. Elmer addresses this specifically in an epilogue, citing the research of Robert Woodberry showing countries with mission presence were more economically developed, had better health care, lower corruption and higher educational attainments.

Elmer writes this memoir in a way that imparts a sense of the wonder, the pain, and growing self-understanding she experienced. She writes honestly about difficulties and shortcomings. She also profiles godly women and men of great integrity, courage, and humility. And she traces the gracious workings of God in her own life from this childhood to her life today.

_____________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author for review.